Monday, February 13, 2012

"Mad Men," "Alcatraz," and the Fascination with the Kennedy Era

Propelled
by the unlikely success of AMC”s “Mad
Men,” television has been fascinated by the early 1960s in recent years. The current season has featured “Pan Am,”
“Playboy Club,” and “Alcatraz,” which have all been set during this time
period. While “Alcatraz” is the only one
of these shows likely to be renewed, the continuing interest in this period
reflects a persistent nostalgia for the United States before the social and political
changes of the 1960s.

Following
the Kennedy assasination, the nation went though a series of upheavals, from
Vietnam to race riots to Watergate.
Though the Kennedy era witnessed the beginning of the civil rights
movement, with sit-ins as well as the March on Washington, many scholars do not
believe the decade truly began until the mid-1960s. One historian refers to 1964 as “The Last
Innocent Year,” as the major aspects of the turbulent decade did not start
until after the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.

Though there
were 16,000 U.S. advisers in Vietnam by 1963, President Lyndon B. Johnson did
not send American ground troops until 1965, when it became clear South Vietnam
would fall to communism without direct U.S. military involvement. While there had been minimal antiwar activity
early in the war, opposition to the conflict grew every year after 1965, as casualties
mounted. By 1968, a majority of
Americans believed the war had been a mistake and protesters and police squared
off at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Furthermore,
the non-violence and the interracialism of the early civil rights movement gave
way to assertions of self-defense and black nationalism. Only a week after
President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act of 1965, race riots broke out in
Watts, followed by three more years of “long, hot, summers,” culminating in a
national wave of violence after Dr. King’s assassination in Memphis in
1968. One of the few cities that did not
experience disorder was Indianapolis, where Robert Kennedy was campaigning for
president in the Indiana primary. After
informing the crowd that King had been shot, RFK told them of the anger he had
felt after his brother’s murder and urged the audience to reject violence. The
younger Kennedy seemed to be a unifying figure in a divisive time, able to
reach out to both blacks and disaffected working-class whites. Adding to the turmoil of that year, RFK
himself was assassinated two months later in Los Angeles, immediately after
winning the California primary.

Richard
Nixon achieved a historic political comeback to win the 1968 presidential
election over Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, and sought to end the war in
Southeast Asia through “Vietnamization”; that is, turning over military responsibilities
to the South Vietnamese Army (ARVN).
Nevertheless, the anti-war movement continued to grow, peaking in 1970
when Nixon expanded the war by invading Cambodia. The largest wave of campus protests followed
and five Kent State students were shot and killed by Ohio National Guardsman.

Eventually,
American military involvement in Vietnam came to a close with the Paris Peace
Accords in 1973, but it took a toll on the country, both in terms of 58,000
casualties as well as a loss of trust in government and other major
institutions. President Johnson and
military leaders had repeatedly insisted we were winning the war and these lies
gave way to a “credibility gap” between the public and Washington. This gap expanded because of Nixon’s prevarications during the Watergate scandal.
In the early 1960s, three quarters of Americans trusted the government
to do the right thing all or most of the time. Since Nixon’s resignation over
the Watergate scandal in 1974, it has been rare to find a poll where even one-third
of the country trusts the government in such a fashion.

In
addition, social and cultural changes disturbed many traditionally minded
Americans. The divorce rate rose
dramatically in the 1960s and 1970s, as did the number of children born out-of-wedlock. Many blamed these trends on the emerging
feminist movement. After the Stonewall
riots in 1969, gays also began to come out of the closet and organize
politically.

As a
result, nostalgia grew for the seeming calm of the 1950s and early 1960s. George Lucas’ film “American Graffiti” (1973)
and the television show “Happy Days,” (1974-1984) were early examples of this
phenomenon. Coming in the immediate
aftermath of Vietnam and Watergate, they presented an optimistic vision of Eisenhower-era
America, without showing the darker sides of the period, such as racial
segregation and McCarthyism.

In latter
years, social conservatives often promoted an image of the 1950s as a time of
stable families when America led the world militarily. On “Meet the Press” in 1995, Newt Gingrich
praised the 1950s, saying that liberal Democratic policies and the 60s
counterculture had undermined the traditional families of the time, causing
modern social problems.

It is not
only conservatives who harken back to the Kennedy era. Numerous hagiographic accounts of the Kennedy
presidency have promoted the idea of his administration as “Camelot.” Oliver
Stone’s “JFK” (1991) suggested that if President Kennedy had lived, he wouldn’t
have escalated the war in Vietnam.
Indeed, the upheavals that followed the Kennedy assassination are a
major reason for the persistent JFK nostalgia.
His presidency now looks like the calm before the storm.

Of
course, “Mad Men” is no “Happy Days.”
The show clearly illuminates some of the downsides of the time,
particularly the institutionalized sexism.
Still, some observers have suggested that the early seasons romanticize
the period. I’ve stopped watching “Pan
Am,” but it did seem to indulge in nostalgia, suggesting that stewardesses are
the avatars of feminism and largely ignoring the difficulties they faced. It is too early to tell with “Alcatraz,”
which moves back and forth in “Lost”-like fashion between present day and the
early 60s. Nevertheless, the
proliferation of such shows, as well as the continued fascination with JFK,
show the nation still has a soft spot for that era in American history.